Video: Met Commissioner clashes with AMs over ‘straight answers’

Hogan-Howe clashed with MPA members over his 'straight answers' Last Tuesday Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe found himself in hot water for suggesting a wider roll-out of taser ‘stun-guns’.

At Thursday’s meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority, the Commissioner claimed London’s media had not fully reported his comments that the roll-out could just be to “one of our response cars” but had instead focussed on a possible roll-out to the Met’s 6,500 vehicles.

MPA members were unhappy that Hogan-Howe’s comments were seemingly uninformed by work undertaken about the use of tasers, including the proportionality of their use against BME communities, and its past statements on the issue.

While defending his earlier comments, the Commissioner managed to further annoy MPA and London Assembly Members Dee Doocey and Jenny Jones (who both led the criticism last week) by suggesting that he, unlike politicians, gives “straight answers”:

A number of AMs believe Hogan-Howe (and the wider Met) lack the proper respect for their status as elected representatives.

Some believe their relationship with the Met will be further distanced next year when the MPA is abolished and responsibility for scrutinising the Met falls to the new Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.

The London Assembly, through a statutory Police and Crime Panel, will then become responsible for holding the MOPC, but not the Met, to account.